Castillo Copper’s geology team is planning to resume Mount Oxide project exploration with a geophysical survey to be carried out at the Big One deposit within the next few weeks.

The company said a drilling team would complete a campaign at the Big One deposit once those results were known, before moving to the Arya prospect to test several sizeable bedrock conductors.

The post-wet season return to the site comes after the State Department of Resources recently granted a final key tenement (EPM 27440) directly north of the Big One Deposit, expanding the core Mount Oxide project footprint by about 23 per cent to 980sq km.

The newly granted tenement includes five well-profiled copper prospects – the Crescent, Flapjack, Pancake, Johnnies and The Wall.

And ongoing forensic work by Castillo’s geology team has identified an incremental 11 targets across the Mount Oxide project which are prospective for various styles of copper-gold mineralisation.

This meant there were now 21 viable copper targets across the project, delivering a significant pipeline of development work ahead, the company said.

“Behind the scenes our geology team has been flat out readying for a resumption of exploration work at the flagship Mount Oxide project,” Castillo Copper managing director Simon Paull said.

“The board is targeting to have drilling teams back to site as soon as practical to complete work at the Big One deposit then commence at the Arya prospect.

“Holistically, with 21 targets across the Mount Oxide project, Castillo now has a significant pipeline of copper-focused exploratory work ahead, coinciding with an impending global supply deficit.”

Related: Castillo looks to strike while copper hot with Big One

Castillo’s Mount Oxide project is located 150km north of Mount Isa near the old Mount Oxide copper mine.

The company in January released what it described as ‘game changing’ assay results confirming a major copper discovery at Big One deposit.

These significantly extended known mineralisation and confirmed a high-grade, shallow scalable copper system at the North West Queensland site.

Assay results included 40m at 1.64 per cent copper including 1m at 16.65 per cent and 44m at 1.19 per cent copper including 1m at 12.6 per cent. Recent drilling also demonstarted high cobalt grades, including 12m at 912ppm cobalt.